Blog Posts For Tag: Basketball

After the first weekend of NBA play, it appears all is well. The slate of games actually increased from 6 million to 6.2 million from last year to this. Many feared repercussions similar to those after the NBA lockout in 1999. However, the players and owners proved most wise to save the Christmas dates. Besides, it is rare that the league enjoys much national attention (read – a national broadcast) until the holiday weekend.

Now that Carmelo Anthony has arrived it appears the balance of power may have shifted from the Western Conference to the Eastern Conference for the first time since Michael Jordan was shooting Space Jam.

Team USA has puts its collection of talent together for 2010 FIBA Championship in Turkey. This initial collection of 22 potential national representatives is far from as impressive as the All-NBA team that rolled out for the 2008 Olympic Games in China. Still, there is no real sense of worry that our national team will fail to bring home the first outright FIBA Championship since 1994.

The Miami Heat are a few roster spots short of going to war in the NBA Eastern Conference. There is no question LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh will be starting, but there will be two more spots left on the floor though. While Zydrunas Ilgauskas will likely start at center, the question is who will take the fifth?

The NBA has an obsession with the number three. The ultimate expression of dominance in this new era of basketball is the three-peat. Every team must have a three point specialist to space the floor in this age of unimaginably tall basketball players at every position. And now the rule of three is being applied to the championship equation.

The 2010 NBA Finals (and yes, I am preemptively giving the Western Conference Finals to LA.) is neither a rematch of the Celtics and Lakers from the 2008 season nor a series between the 2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics and the 2009 NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers. This may seem perfectly obvious to many, but pundits are sure to compare a Celtics team with a healthy Garnett to the championship team two years ago and a Lakers team with a healthy Andrew Bynum to the championship team from last season. This could conveniently by billed as a battle between the optimal incarnation of both storied franchises in the 21st century, especially as the NBA tries to steal attention from the LeBron watch.

Yesterday I was watching the replay of PTI on ESPN2 and caught an interview with Derek Fisher. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon were asking his thoughts on the aging of Kobe Bryant and on the backlash from Utah Jazz fans during the last playoff series. This is where I get angry. He has the gall to summarily dismiss the anger of the Jazz fans, saying that he simply plays a game.

I hate to write a reaction piece, but I was listening to Bill Simmon’s Sportsguy Podcast with Ric Bucher yesterday and was intrigued by the re-emergence of the thought that LeBron James might be the most physically gifted player in the history of the league, but his passion for basketball falls short of eventually making him the best player in the history of the NBA.

The NFL offseason has overshadowed the NBA postseason this year. While the NFL made fans squirm, holding the NFL schedule release back until it could serve as a terrific lead in for the NFL draft and the latest Ben Roethlisberger drama, the NBA has been having another spectacular first round of the playoffs. So, for those sports fans just coming out of the football trance, here is what you have been missing.

This weekend four major sports stories dominated: Butler beat Michigan State to reach the NCAA Men’s finals, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees opened the MLB season, Tiger began taking practice swings at Augusta in preparation for the Masters, and Donovan McNabb was traded to the Washington Redskins. That is actually quite a bit to handle, but this begs the question, how do these stories rank?

Selection Sunday is as much about conference respect as the NCAA Men’s Tournament and this season the power conferences took a huge, humbling blow to the gut. Sure the Big East received eight bids and the Big 12 received seven, but the other conferences have to take stock of what happened this year and either accept that the Mid Majors have arrived or cry and whine until the field is expanded to 96 teams.

At its best, the NBA is a competitive league with the best athletes in the world playing at such a high level that it shames the fans watching over the age of 25 (who have come to grips with the fact that they are terrible athletes in a perpetual decline) and inspires fans under the age of 18 (who still have the youth on their side and unbridled confidence that they can do anything). At its worst, the NBA is a league in which overpaid athletes coast during games and fans fail to truly care about the game. Every year, without fail, the worst example of this is the NBA All Star game.

When do we know that a sports query or sports story has truly resonated with the public? When a group of guys over 25 gets together for a mini-reunion and manages to talk about them between embellished stories of debauchery. My buddy Bill came back from New York this Holiday season and there were two sports topics discussed: the ever-escalating Tiger Woods sex saga and whether or not LeBron James will stay in Cleveland or bolt for New York. As interesting as it was pretending to be the PR team for Tiger, the most interesting question had for me was the LeBron talks.

The NBA may still be a perimeter oriented game, but coaches and general managers still yearn for a dominant center to reside in the post with his back to the basket. However, just as seven-footers are rare in the general population, quality big men are an exciting find in the game of professional basketball. There appears to be a great influx of these giants developing their game in the pros now. The future is bright for fans of these old school basketball players, but the fact that they are developing now beckons the question: who are the best now?

The World Series is finishing up with the Yanks up 3 games to 1. The NFL season is about halfway through and just about every team still has a shot at the playoffs. The college football season has just a few weeks over, meaning it is time for the BCS standings to screw a deserving team over and start the annual clamor for a playoff system. In the midst of all this the NHL and NBA seasons have started.

The Orlando Magic are down 0-2 in the NBA Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers. Sports sites and basketball experts are busy decoding every game and pinpointing the Magic’s struggle and one of the arguments you and I are sure to hear is that the Magic take too many threes.

Every year just before the NBA playoffs begin, the postseason, the 16-team tournament or “second season”, seems to be sold as a story with plot points at every round and a black and white biopic for every charismatic player or superstar for each remaining team.

After a month prelude that was at times compelling (Celtics-Bulls) and at times uninspired (Mavs-Spurs) the conference finals have finally begun. The Los Angeles Lakers, who won last night thanks to Kobe’s fourth quarter performance, play the Denver Nuggets for the Western Conference title and the Cleveland Cavs play the Orlando Magic for the Eastern Conference title.

This year’s NBA Playoffs is turning out to be as predictable as I expect the summer blockbusters to be this summer. The Eastern Conference has only one possibility for the NBA Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Celtics and Magic are an injury or a year or two of experience away from cancelling the coronation of LeBron James. Despite the abundance of quality teams in the Western Conference(the first six seeds had a winning percentage of at least 60 percent), the Los Angeles Lakers appear to be playing on another level, with a deep bench, a penchant for smooth interior passing, and a superstar. Still, there or more storylines than simply the finals this spring, there are 14 other teams in the postseason and yesterday I discussed the Eastern Conference seven, now I get to take a look at why exactly the rest of the Western Conference is playing.

The NBA Finals has been set since it became evident Kevin Garnett was not coming back to Boston this postseason. It is all but a foregone conclusion that it will be the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers - the deadly assassin versus the newly anointed king, the perennial champions from the land of the sun and stars versus the have-nots from America’s rust belt. Still there are 14 other teams in the playoffs, and there must be some meaning in their postseason participation besides avoiding a lottery pick in one of the worst drafts in the last decade. So, this begs the question, what are they really playing for?

After a few months of wondering what was going to happen in this new season of MLB, opening day finally commenced yesterday. Of course this was simply game one for many teams (apart from the Philadelphia Phillies and the Atlanta Braves who officially opened the season on Sunday night) in a long schedule that will give the winners 161 more chances to end their perfect season and losers 161 more games to find redemption. Still, to say that a few things did not surprise me would be a liar.

Whenever anybody thinks of the NBA and can’t miss games, the same match up comes up, the game between the purple and gold Los Angeles Lakers and the green and white Boston Celtics. This is perhaps the only nationally recognized rivalry in basketball, which is odd considering that the NBA has been around since the 1940s (which is also why everyone was so excited about last year’s finals). However, if you live near a city lucky enough to have one of these professional basketball teams you know that there are plenty of regional rivalries that have as much passion or are revving up to be as intense as the ultimate East Coast-West Coast showdown.

My heart jumped when I realized that my latest move landed me in the cave of married friends’ duplex in Chicago without any means to watch March Madness. They did not want to get cable, which is cool, and meant to get rabbit ears at some time but never quite got around to it. I could have gone out and splurged on rabbit ears and that digital signal box but I really did not want to start feeding me television habit. So there I was stuck between my desire to watch endless hours of basketball and not wanting to spend needless money on something I was going to use for a couple weeks. Then I found that NCAA.com was streaming the games live and the heart murmur went subsided.

As I watch this modern version of basketball I often wonder where the game is going. I wonder how these stars will change the way the game is played and what coaching strategies will make the game look different in an arbitrary date it the near future like 2015.

Invariably, any basketball postseason experience, whether you are watching an NBA game or any of the contests on the slate during March Madness, will have a game that will come down to the final minutes and a four or five point deficit. It is moments like these, after years of watching painful finishes, that have made me despise announcers who feel required to say that the team trying to claw into the lead does not need to go for three.

This weekend not only signals the beginning of the March Madness, but it also marks the final playoff games of the World Baseball Classic and the beginning of the MLS season. The sad reality is that I do not care about either one. I do not care about the WBC because I have 162 games of MLB baseball in front of me and that is a lot of baseball to care about. I simply do not know why I cannot get myself to care about the MLS though.

Last year around this time I was eagerly awaiting the normal insanity brought about by the first two rounds of the Men’s Tournament only to find a rather lame series of results. Nine and ten seeds do not get upset status in the first round. So, there were five upsets in the first 32 games. That was not a very exciting development.

A week ago the number one seeds in the NCAA Tournament seemed pretty much set. UNC, Pittsburgh, UConn, and Oklahoma were on their way to leading the regions, but then a little funny thing happen called Championship Week. First Oklahoma lost in the Big 12 quarterfinals to Oklahoma State, then Pittsburgh lost in the Big East quarterfinals to West Virginia, and most recently UConn lost a ridiculously fantastic six-overtime game to Syracuse a few hours later. Meanwhile UNC is set to take on Virginia Tech with out star guard Ty Lawson. So, what is the seeding committee thinking?

Terrell Owens left America’s Team for a team he dubbed North America’s Team. While some might be amused by this clever turn of phrase, many more are surprised by the decision to play in Buffalo for Dick Jauron, the place offense goes to die. In retrospect, the last couple of years have actually been a pretty dynamic and shocking time for us in the sports world. Owens decision joins the ranks of these other sundry moments that have kept me on my feet in the last couple years.

With a little more than 20 games left to go before the NBA regular season is over it is time to take a look at the stories that are sure to dominate the speculative headlines, features, and blogs.

Last season the trade deadline was a chance to improve a team’s position to try and spoil the Boston Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers chances to win an NBA Championship. This season the trade deadline was a chance to collect expiring contracts to put themselves in position to sign an NBA Star in 2010.

The summer of 2010 promises to be one of the best free agent classes in NBA history with a plethora of top tier players becoming unrestricted free agents or having a player option to terminate their contracts and cash in for bigger deals.

This weekend the NBA All Star Game brings together the most popular (not the best) players in the league, a bonanza of sponsorship deals, and 20 hours of useless television coverage. This is truly a corporate retreat run awry. I should not have to listen Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith reflect on their careers as professional basketball players for hours on end just to watch a few events that should take a little more than an two hours to complete.